In recent years, larger and thinner substrates have been manufactured by semiconductor manufacturing equipment. A hand for transferring such a large and thin substrate is proposed in Patent Document 1.
The hand 1 disclosed in Patent Document 1 includes a longitudinal hand support and a plurality of transverse hand supports extending transversely from the longitudinal hand support, and is configured to minimize the warping of the substrate supported on the hand.
However, to reduce the warping and maintain the horizontal posture of the supported substrate, both of the longitudinal hand support and the transverse hand supports need to have a large number of support pins of the same height.
When a substrate is supported with a large number of support pins, the risk of electrostatic discharge (ESD) increases, which is undesirable for conducting processing on the substrate. Moreover, since a substrate, which usually has a low rigidity, is supported to have a horizontal posture with a large number of support pins, unnecessary vibrations may occur in the substrate when an external force is applied. This is also undesirable for conducting processing on the substrate.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent No. 4681029